


peeling from the inside out

by Lilaciliraya



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Abuse, Alcoholism, Bullying, Child Abuse, Depressed Harry, Depression, Harry Styles is Marcel, High School AU, M/M, Minor Character Death, Music, Past Character Death, Sad, Sad Harry, Second Person, Sexual Abuse, anne dies, harry's dad is shit, kind of, marcel - Freeform, sorry - Freeform, yay
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-11-02
Updated: 2016-01-08
Packaged: 2018-04-29 15:26:04
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,696
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5132615
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lilaciliraya/pseuds/Lilaciliraya
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Somewhere along the way everyone else in your life shoved their words inside you and even with your sweater vests and your wool socks on the hatred managed to push your soul out to make room for itself to grow. </p><p>(And deep inside you know it wasn’t just the hatred. The love- that’s even worse.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. high school

The first thing you learn in high school is that nobody likes a boy who wears sweater vests. You're not sure whether that has more to do with appearance-based assumptions about you or the fact that anyone who tried to talk to you would probably get beaten up; all you know is that no one ever tries to talk to you. And that's fine, you tell yourself, because you don't need anyone else to build your happiness for you. You are strong, you tell yourself. You are independent.

Sometimes you forget, is all. You forget that you're not normal, and that makes you not quite as strong. Because then you get shoved against a random locker and the sharp pain in your back says "don't forget" and no matter how hard you try to ignore it the ghost of "faggot" in your ear always reminds you. Then you peel yourself off of the cool metal and pretend that you still don't know because maybe if you can convince yourself it's not true then no one else will believe it either. It doesn't work, but.

Your mother always told you "if at first you don't succeed, try, try again". You think about it though, and the whole thing unravels because your mother didn’t succeed in the end. Your mother’s dead and she didn’t even make it to forty. So maybe you'll stop trying. Give up, give in. Give them what they want. You deserve it. But maybe you won't.

(You deserve that too.)

\---

Sometimes your mind gets stuck in places where other peoples' just skim over. You think your head is broken somehow, like a skipping record, maybe. Like a car that only holds 2 gallons of gas and you're always having to stop- having to stop- having to stop to refill the tank. It worries you that other people can just go about their daily lives and say things like "self-conscious" without ever pausing to consider its meaning. Self-conscious is a word that has been jumping at you for a while now. You'll be sitting in class trying to learn and there it is in the back of your head, gnawing away until you have to focus so hard on ignoring it that you might as will think it through. You're worried because, at least from your perspective, it seems that everyone else's brains are more under their control. Do they understand these concepts better than you or are they just able to see a bigger picture and ignore such small technicalities? You don't know.

What you do know is that this word is a problem for you because its meanings make no sense in your head. (Or they do, really, but you won’t believe it.) If you call people self-conscious you are saying that they are uncomfortable with themselves. But, if you consider the literal definition, you realize that there must be a problem, right? Because this word by definition means that you are conscious of yourself. People toss this word around as if those two definitions are the same, as if being aware of yourself means that you should be ashamed of what you find.

You're worried that you are the only one that worries about things like this, that you're different, or even more so, at least. (Worried, worried, worry. Always.) Because different is bad, different is noticed. Which is exactly what you don't want to be.

You think that maybe if you weren't so self-conscious you would be able to make a friend to talk to about all of this, all of the things that happen inside your head, how lost you feel inside of it, how helpless. But maybe if you weren't self-conscious you wouldn't care. Because this word insinuates that you are right about yourself, and maybe this time you don't want to be.

(You’re only ever right when you don’t want to be.)

\---

You first realized you were different from everyone else at a very young age. Other kids, they would fall down the stairs and they would cry out, they were upset. You would fall off of your bike and scrape your knee and you would think about the cookie you'd stolen earlier that day. You'd remember that mommy told you not to eat them until after dinner and you'd remember how good the cookie had tasted even when you'd been so bad. And you would feel the sting in your knee but your mind would get stuck on cookie- cookie- cookie. (You were bad- you were bad- you were bad.) And you'd keep your mouth shut. Hang your head and stay quiet, because you deserved it. Of course, the patches of blood on your pants would give it away eventually, but.

(You're much smarter now.)

\---

High school boys can be brutal. You know this because you are one. All of these kids are shoved into a dark building together all day long and they're just kids, they're boys, they're scared. They don't know they don't know they don't so they try to pretend. They pretend that they do and if that means that they act like the tough guys they think they're supposed to be you figure it's only fair. You? No, you don't do that, because you already know you aren't the tough violent type, but most of the others, they do. And if that means that you get a little extra attention then who are you to interfere? They need someone to let them feel big, to help them feel strong. And you figure you deserve the role.

The only thing that really changes for you is the amount of bruises on your body and slurs in your head, but that's like adding to infinity, in the end it doesn't make much difference. It's nothing you can't handle. You have to take it, because those boys are going to be somebodies and the greatest you ever hope to be to the world is that kid that the important guy used to hit sometimes who maybe helped him deal with some of his anger. If someone appreciates you, even as a punching bag, you should be grateful. You know this. 

(You know you'll never be anything more.)

You deserve the punishment. Sometimes you need it, latch onto it and you're sorry. You shouldn't enjoy this, you're so sorry, but you do. This is all you'll ever be, it's all you'll ever be. At least, that's what you tell yourself.

(You can’t help enjoying it because it’s the opposite of gentle, and gentle makes you sick.)

(It's really a gift that keeps on giving because when your eyes are black and blue they can't be her green.)

 

\---

Eating lunch alone isn't actually as bad as it's made out to be. You sit on the bench in the hallway while you eat and you think. You listen to your music, your Freshman Year playlist, and nobody comes near you. It's become your favorite time of the day. Sometimes you think that you could live your life homeless on an anonymous bench in the middle of nowhere and listen to music and not be touched or even looked at and you would be happy. Happier than you've ever been here.

You ignore the small, weak part of you that cries out ‘you're lonely’. (You turn up your music.) And the angry bell always rings and you have to go back to the loud hallways instead, and the harsh voices and the rough hands and the lurching bus and the cold house and the love and the hurt hurt hurt. You turn up your music and pretend that if you don't hear the bell ring it won't ever actually happen.

(You probably don't deserve to be that happy anyway.)

\---

You like the cold, but you don't really like being cold. You like to layer your clothing and wear your sweater vests and your wool socks. They make you feel safe, when you wear them, they make you feel like somebody is holding you everywhere. A nice touch, a warm, safe, comforting touch. Maybe you imagine your mom hugging you, back when you didn't know hurt beyond a scraped knee, and maybe your layers will never compare to that but you love your layers, you do. Your mom deserves that, to be remembered, to be loved.

(You're sorry.)

Sometimes it feels like your layers are the only thing holding you together and if you took off your wool socks and your sweater vest your soul would slide out through your toes or leak through the hole in your chest.

Sometimes you don't make sense. You just think that it's nice when the world realizes how cold it can be here and changes temperature to match and maybe make it easier because, yeah, it's cold out there everything (everyone) is cold but you can wear your clothes, your layers, and cover yourself up and block it out and hold yourself in and the cold can't touch you. Because sometimes you feel like that's all it is. It's so cold.

(It's cold here in this lonely mind that won't let you think about anything warm. Cold- cold- cold- that's all you are. You're conforming, you worry, becoming as cold as them, as cold as the world is trying to make you. You're not sure it matters. You just know you worry and it's cold.)

(And you’re so, so sorry.)

\---

You weren't always alone. You had a friend once, Nick. You played soccer together; you loved him. You remember one time when your mother was busy after a game and you went back to Nick's house instead of your own. It had rained, at the game, so Nick lent you a pair of flannel pants and a t-shirt to wear. You felt good, warm, so happy. (You didn't really know sad at all, yet.) Nick wanted to play X-box but you were bad at video games so he let you have the headset. You watched him play while you charmed the other gamers. You were so friendly, then, all cuddled up with Nick on his couch and chatting mindlessly with strangers. The two of you fell asleep tangled in each other on the couch, and you woke up giggling with his little sister jumping on top of you the next morning.

(But that was before.)

(You don't like remembering that now.)

\---

(Other times you hate the cold- it's so cold- it's so cold- your clothes are off "so beautiful", your soul is escaping, no no you want your vest back on you don't want to look good, please don't say that- where did your socks go- everything is blurry, find your glasses- your hair needs gel slick it back so he can’t card his too soft hand through it- you need your music, where is your music, you need that playlist, the one you're always listening to lately, you need it to block out the sweet voice-

you're numb,

you're gone,

((you're sorry)).

Your mind won't let you focus- jump- jump- jump hey your heart it doing that too- thump- thump- thump is that how your body works you wonder- does you heart control your brain, they both sped up to dizzying levels- where's the warm touch you need safe.)

\---

But you don't talk about that.

(Never talk about anything.)

\---

When you were younger you were always singing. You fancied yourself the next Britney Spears, and you liked to sing at the top of your lungs whenever possible. You did it to keep your mind moving and flowing on, to loosen it up and stop it from skip- skip- skipping along. You didn't know this then, nobody really knew how you thought. 

(They still don't, and you're still not sure if this is a real problem or not.)

Your mother, she used to love your singing, she'd laugh and clap and hum along, when she could. She was tone deaf, but you- for all your practice you weren't bad, so she tended to let you take the lead and stuck to songs she knew really well. When you two performed the happy birthday song together you used to think you were unstoppable.

But then she'd start leaving the room when you opened your mouth. And you stopped singing for awhile, not wanting to drive your mother away, but. Your mind got jumpy again, and the music was so smooth. You had to keep singing, you really did, and you hoped she would understand. She got frustrated, started telling you to "stop that racket" instead.

And you loved your mom so, so much, you did. But she just didn't understand. You had to sing and when she told you to stop you panicked and your mind sped up more. So you sang, you sang more than you ever had. You gave your mom headaches all the time because you wouldn't quit for hours at a time.

The first noticeable symptoms were supposed to be headaches.

(You gave your mom headaches all the time.)

\---  
So nobody noticed. And it was too late.

Your mom is dead.

(Your fault.)

(You’re sorry.)

\---

The second thing you learn in high school, the next really big thing, is that nobody likes the fairy. Nobody. (You already knew this, but it’s worse than you imagined, now.) You know that different scares people. Different scares you. You're beginning to sense a pattern in your life, it's probably more about you than the whole gay thing, really, but. School was bad enough when people simply disliked your clothes or were fueled by rumors about the person you are hiding beneath the horrible fashion sense, but now that they really know something about you? (“The fag is actually a fucking homo, dude!”) You don't want to be the cliche whiny teenager, but it's getting harder to stay detached from the hatred spewed at you during school hours. 

(They don’t know how much you deserve it, but you do.)

(The physical you could handle, depended on really, but you don’t need any more words shooting around your brain.)

The smooth cold of metal on your skin makes you sick now. The sensation presses the start button on an endless loop of "fairy- fairy- faggot- princess- kill yourself- faggy geek- suck my dick bitch- man whore- slut-” and you never make it past that word without heaving.

Your Freshman Year playlist, your phone informs you, has been played 291 times. 

(You wish the volume went higher.)

\---

 

You go to the park sometimes, after bad nights. Not right away, but you're not usually really back to yourself again until you take a very thorough shower and that takes until after dark most times.   
(You can feel the hands ghost across your skin ever so softly, too loving, too gentle.)

(It makes you sick and you have to scrub so hard and bruising.)

So, when it gets dark you grab your phone and your headphones and you walk down the street to the park and you try not to think. It doesn't work (you never stop thinking, worrying), but you manage not to think about anything important, anything that makes the fist in your chest squeeze tighter. This time on the walk you think about how lucky you are that you got to stay in the nice neighborhood your mom picked, how lucky you are that your dad pays for your phone, how great your Freshman Year playlist is, what songs you might want to add.

Your mind gets stuck. Your dad pays for your phone- your dad pays- your dad pays. You don't like having to rely on him, but you don't have money, you don't have a job. You're too anxious for a job. You don't have a good track record with socialization and communication. You wonder what you're going to do with your life, when school is over, when you have to do something. You can't picture yourself in an office all day, you always thought you would end up in entertainment or something fun like that. You were going to try out for the X-Factor, you used to say. Your mother always believed in you. (Your mother is dead.) But you're not stupid, you know how risky that would be. You gave that up, you remind yourself. 

(You haven't sung since you killed her.)

You make it to the park.

You collapse onto your back on your bench and stare gently at the stars, music drifting softly in your ears. You love this bench. It's big and red with peeling paint and it sits all alone in the corner of the park. You come here when you're sad. (You always seem to be sad.) You like to watch the stars from your bench and imagine yourself among them. You feel like enough of a star already, really, because stars float above the world out of touch with everything else. And stars can be seen on earth long after they die. You think that you could be a star, because you think that maybe you died with her, and nobody else knows just yet. It's a nice thought, to be a star.

Your eyes slip closed and your fingers find the intricate grooves of the carvings underneath the seat. They bring back so many memories, but you don't want to remember, so you squeeze your eyes shut tighter. The wind whips your un-gelled curls around your head and throws your tears off of the sharp slopes of your cheekbones. You barely notice. You're stuck in your head again, wishing even harder now that you could just be a star, it's not to much to ask, really.

But stars are beautiful, you think. Tragically beautiful. Lost yet glowing brightly. Even the ones long gone shine with the illusion of life. You sigh, because you're not anywhere close to beautiful and you know it. That's just how it is.

(You don’t deserve it, is what you don’t think.)

(You should know that though, you should.)

You feel your fingers going numb against the rough wood, but you don't want to go home. Home to the caresses and the kisses and the slurred moans of "Anne". You never want to go there, but you have to. So you wish one more time before standing up and composing yourself. It takes everything you have left today to begin the journey back towards that place, but you manage. Walking lifelessly back home, you convince yourself that you'll never be a star. And that's okay, because you don't deserve it.

(You think of her- think of her- think of her.)

\---

You’re in class and you’re trying desperately to remember a time when it didn’t feel like this,  
didn’t burn to keep your eyes open or weigh you down to think about your next breath- but you can’t. You know there was a time, when your mom was alive, surely, when bruises scraped knees were worse than hugs and kisses, because you were so happy- how that feel? What did you do to feel so okay? You need to remember, remember so you can try to copy it. 

(Copying is the closest you’ll ever get, now.)

Build a rickety window from distorted glass that will please god, let a little bit of light through, even bent and twisted, please make you feel at least better than this hopelessness. You read a poem once that said: “here is the part where everyone is happy all the time and we were all forgiven even though we didn’t deserve it”. Your life is not a poem. 

(This is not that part.)

If you could remember you’d make it through this part where no one is happy, but all you see through your miserable little window is you mom holding her head asking you to “please, baby, just sit quietly, you like this movie, right? If you sing you won’t hear, and no, honey let’s leave the volume down, you just have to be quiet to hear, yeah?” And happy birthday plays in you head in an out of tune minor and you’re at a soccer game but it’s raining and you’re all alone and it’s cold. You don’t have your sweater vests or your wool socks. You can’t remember why you’re still here.

(“You will be alone always and then you will die.”)

\---

You were nine when you realized that your mother was leaving you forever, when you finally thought you understood what the word death meant. It wasn’t as simple as you made it in your head, of course. You didn’t really understand it- still don’t. But you were nine and you were at the hospital visiting your mom and death was on your mind and something touched your little heart and it must have been an answer, right? You saw a kid at the vending machine whose dollar was sucked into the dark mysterious slot but she didn’t get a soda back. And that was a big tragedy for you at nine years old and it seemed so unfair. You mourned the loss of that strawberry soda for hours but you didn’t really know why yet. You knew that strawberries were your favorite fruit but you also knew that you were a big boy and it would take more than a few lost strawberries to make you cry. So you didn’t get it, not right away.

It was later, when it happened. You saw that strawberry soda in another person’s room and you got a funny feeling in your throat like you were choking on your lungs because even though it probably wasn’t the exact same soda the girl should have gotten it was still so unfair. That kid didn’t get her soda but other people can have theirs and they don’t even know how lucky they are. Your mind started bouncing because what if that kid needed the soda, what if that kid collected stray pennies for months just to be wasted in that machine, so what if the kid would have drank the soda and ended up with nothing anyways, she wanted that soda. And she’ll see other people take it for granted that their dollars will prompt the machine to spit out their drinks every time but she won’t get that luxury anymore.

You didn’t want your mother to die. You didn’t want her lost forever and it wasn’t fair. Because it didn’t matter how long you sat at the foot of the vending machine and hoped, you wouldn’t suddenly get her back. And you didn’t have anymore dollars left. And you would never get over this, but eventually you would have to get up and walk back home where you belonged and pretend that you had finished the soda already. Because what if that kid’s father gave her that dollar? She doesn’t want to waste it, or she doesn’t want him to know that his kind action of giving her the dollar had really only caused pain. He didn’t do anything wrong. 

So maybe she is drowning in guilt because she’s the one who lost it. She can’t show it because then he’ll ask why. And it wasn’t really about the strawberry soda anymore, for you. You weren’t sure exactly what it all meant, but you did know that your mom was dying and you must have figured it out. The terrible feeling you were experiencing had to be death.

You wanted to run to your mom and cry, but she was the one dying and you were the killer. So you didn’t. You stayed in the hallway across from the vending machine and you thought you understood death. 

(The cloud of worry that followed you that day just never went away.)

(You worry, worry, worry, always.)

So, while you are ten, eleven, twelve after she dies, you don't like strawberry soda anymore. After that, you forget. But bananas are still your favorite fruit.

(You were killing her and you worried about a soda.)

(It was so easy for you; you’re a natural born fucking killer.)

\---

Your father has never hit you. 

(Sometimes, you wish he would.)

\--

( Instead, when he drank himself out of his mind after your mother finally died- instead of hitting you and yelling drunkenly about how “you killed her Harry, you killed her”- he held you close and ran his hands over your face, whispered something so slurred the only words you recognized were “her eyes”, and then called you Anne.

You remember that it was your own head screaming “you killed her, you killed her” and you felt so crushed under the weight of your father’s sorrow that you just sat there. 

You didn’t move.

You didn’t even sing.

((You know it wouldn’t have stopped your mind this time anyways.))

You don’t remember how you found out when your mother died. You remember this instead.)

\---

You realize one morning that you feel a longing somewhere inside. You want to be sad now, you realize, you crave it. It catches you off guard. “Why would you want that?” you chastise yourself. You’ve been unbearably sad and all you wanted was for it to end. But then it makes sense, in some twisted kind of way.

You’re just so empty right now, so hollow- at least of yourself. Somewhere along the way everyone else in your life shoved their words inside you and even with your vests and your wool socks on the hatred managed to push your soul out to make room for itself to grow. You don’t remember who you’re supposed to be but you remember the sadness and how easy it was to feel. You want it back now. You’ll take anything over this.

(And deep inside you know it wasn’t just the hatred. The love- that’s even worse.)

(It’s the only kind of love you deserve, though, you know.)

\---


	2. poison

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so I edited chapter one a bit and I know it's been a while (sorry, busy year) so maybe you want to re-read it? or not. okay so... here it is and thank you for taking the time to read what I have to say? it's pretty cool that you are, so.

You start going to the library for lunch because they found your spot again. The new one. It’s not bad and the librarian likes you more than anyone you’ve ever met. You almost cry the first time she greets you with a hug. Almost. You do have a panic attack in the bathroom, but it was nice. For a few seconds you felt warmth even your damn sweater vests can’t give you anymore, and you felt a little less broken, when you could enjoy the gentleness of her embrace. Before you remembered.

(They are falling apart with you, you’re destroying them from the inside out, you’re cancer, you killed your mom and now you’re insatiable.) 

But even though the librarian likes you she can’t let you break the rules every day, so you can’t eat. That’s okay, you tell yourself, it’s worth it. It’s just another way you hurt. You’re good at hurting, good at staying quiet. (“Take it so good, baby.”) You feel sick most days anyways.

The thing is, though, that lunch was really the only time you ate because you get free lunch at school and it’s too risky for you to venture to the kitchen and search the empty cabinets when your dad is home. So, now that you’ve cut out the only meal you ever ate, you’re losing weight fast. Too fast, but what does it matter anymore. You stopped caring about yourself once you realized you deserved the death penalty. You’re a little relieved inside that you don’t have friends, because you’re reminded again how hard it would be to hide your rotting core.

(Your cancerous heart.) 

You’re metastasizing, spreading your fatal grip to everyone around you. The bullies, your father, they try to poison you, but they’re poisoning themselves as well. You wonder who will last the longest. You want to laugh. You almost cry.

(Almost.)

\--

The thing you notice about starving is that you don’t feel hungry. You’re supposed to, you think. But you’re killing yourself and your body doesn’t care. It’s like everybody wants you dead, or maybe it just realized that you’ve wanted this for awhile. Maybe your body is just used to it. Maybe the level of pain is so insignificant to the cancer in your soul that it just doesn’t register. Maybe it’s just as done with this life as you are. It doesn’t matter. What’s true is that you’re starving and you still can’t even feel anything.

(You deserve all of this emptiness, you’ve decided, because it’s much worse than sad.)

And you know that sitting here and pitying yourself isn’t going to do shit about it but the mean words stuck on repeat in your head don’t even cause your stomach to clench in disgust and sadness anymore. And god, that pitying won’t stop because you think ‘you don’t even deserve to feel shitty anymore’. And you know it’s dumb and you know you’re selfish and you know, you know this isn’t about you but you can’t stop getting sucked into the void. It should be about your mom. But you’re sitting here thinking about how you’re not even hungry.

(You haven’t eaten in 8 days.)

(You’re not even fucking hungry.)

\--

 

You decide to do your homework in the park one day. You don’t want to go home so you’ve finally decided not to. Once you get there you realize that your bench is a lot nicer before you go home than it is after you’re used. It doesn’t even hurt to sit down. Why you haven’t been coming here everyday after school, you don’t know. 

(You do know. It all circles back to that damn cookie.)

All you do know is that the bench is solid underneath you and the wind is warm against your skin like rustling sheets in your bed when you’re nice and cozy and your homework is so ordinary that the skin on your chest has peeled off and there is nothing restricting your breathing at all. You’re so fucking free. You don’t cry, but you think if you did it would be different from all of the other times. But your math homework has to get done, so you put your headphones on, your Freshman Year playlist, and continue working.

It’s all open and free and easy until this boy sits down next to you. The door in your lungs slams shut and your skin is too tight and you can’t focus on your work because you have to focus on not looking like you’re focusing on this new guy even when you are because who does he think he is? But he hasn’t done anything wrong so you close your eyes and calm yourself down. This can be easy. 

You sneak a peek at the boy next to you and hope he doesn’t notice you looking, but then your hair falls in your face so you didn’t really get to see him but now you can’t look again because it would be too obvious. A part of you says talk to him because his smile looked friendly enough through the blur of your curls, but another part of you says a boy who sits in parks on Tuesday afternoons is never going to want to talk to you. He’s too normal to ever want that, and besides, if he didn’t know how toxic you are by looking at you he would definitely notice if you tried to speak. Don’t draw attention to the bad things, you think. Bad things like you. (You worry, worry, worry, always.)

So you decide not to start a conversation, but just as you return to your work the boy says hello. How likely is it that he’s talking to you? He’s seen the way you dress and that scares most people off, so it’s probably meant for someone else. Except you don’t hear anyone else close enough around you, so maybe he’s just being polite. You have to look at him. If it’s someone else he’ll be facing them and won’t notice anyways. You look. He’s smiling at you. You don’t know what you’re supposed to do in this situation, but you’re in a good mood so maybe it’ll be okay if you just say hi. You do. He chuckles and you’ve definitely done something wrong now- why is he laughing at you? You panic and start putting your books away. Home it is.

When you stand his sentence falters- and, oh, he was talking to you, except you didn’t hear anything he was saying and now you really really need to get away from here.

He seemed so nice but you run. You run because you’ll always run. Because you’re weak and scared and toxic. You don’t look back.

(He doesn’t know but it’s for the best.)

If only he knew he wouldn’t want to talk. He doesn’t know he doesn’t know he doesn’t know.

(You get home and your dad’s there and you’re back at the park that night.)

\--

You see your school choir getting onto a bus for some singing competition one morning at school. That could have been you. But you killed her you killed her you killed her and now you can’t. You killed her- you killed her- you killed her- you run. You run because you always run, because you will always run. You run because you’re panicking because you killed your mother and she was the best thing that has ever happened to you. Because you wouldn’t stop fucking singing even if it was to save her. Because you put your mental state above your own fucking mother, because you’re a selfish monster who doesn’t care about collateral damage.

Because in the movies they never show the lives lost in the accidents during the car chases that the supposed hero causes, and how were you supposed to know? 

You were only a kid, and you didn’t even care. (A natural born fucking killer.) You run to the bathroom so you can panic alone and you deserve how nothing you feel when you puke and miss the toilet like a kid, like that kid, like the one who killed his own mom. You can’t stop it, the reel of ‘you killed her you killed her you killed her’. You wish it was in your dad’s voice, but it’s in your own.

(You killed your mother.)

(And you haven’t stopped killing since.)

.

“You’re killing yourself you know.” 

You jump way higher than can be excused and turn to the stranger on the other end of the bench. You furrow your eyebrows and hope he understands your silent question. Talking is apparently too much for your broken brain to handle, so you’ve given it up.

“Sorry. You just seemed sad and I wanted to be profound and all that jazz, but it turns out stuff like that is much more awkward to say in real life than the movies would have you know.” You wonder why he’s talking to you. You should let him know what you are, what you do. It’s only fair to him. You don’t, though, because you don’t talk anymore. The conversation is still uncomfortable, and you want to reassure the boy that it’s you that’s making this wrong and weird and off, but you can’t so you hope he knows that he’s not the problem. You feel like running again, but you just hug your book to your chest and hope he doesn’t notice how your hands are shaking.

(You’re so pathetic.)

You wish he would go away so you wouldn’t have to face this shadowed monster, the one you’ve really been running from, the one that haunts you always. (You.) He doesn’t go away. (You can’t get your shadow to go away either.) He sighs and stares at you like you’re something new.

(You’re poison.)

(You run.)

(Again.)

.

The librarian starts letting you eat in the library, even though it’s against the rules. She even brings you lunch every day and shoves it into your hands and pretends like she’s not worried about you. You know how you look. You look like a walking skeleton, like the grim reaper, like the death that you bring with you everywhere you go. But she’s so worried about it, about you, that she gets this look on her face like sadness, and you kind of like that she’s worried, that she cares, at first. 

But then you realize that you’re doing it again, spreading the poison, taking down everyone around you. And the fact that it made you feel good, even if only for a little while? That scares you because it feels like the monster in the shadows is winning, like the killer you are is showing through. You try to eat the food she gives you and try to make it better, make her happy, but when that doesn’t work you just stop coming. The library is yet another ghost in your graveyard.

(The killer strikes again.)  
.

In movies the family of the victim is always out for revenge on the wicked cold-blooded murderer. It’s fitting that you are too. You could do it.

(Cure the poison.)

(You could.)

.

 

You can’t stop seeing the boy everywhere you go. You’ve never seen him at school before but now it’s as if he is the only other person that uses the hallways. Every time you see him your heart jumps and your ribs turn solid like concrete and you kind of feel like they are pulling you down and drowning you. It’s not the concrete that’s keeping you from breathing, it’s not the anxiety. It’s the water pushing down on you from all sides, the pressure, his blue blue eyes. 

(Not green.) 

You keep running, because you’ve always run and you will always run, and maybe that’s okay because each time you run (Walk. You walk because you’re too exhausted and weak to actually run.) you run from the boy who’s done nothing wrong and into the hands of your bullies. It doesn’t matter. You don’t know why the kid keeps chasing after death, but you’re not going to let anything hurt him. 

(The biggest danger in this school is you.) 

So you run and run and run and run (walk, walk, walk, walk), and the dizziness blocks out everything wrong with the world and the fuzzy wall between your thoughts blocks out everything wrong with you (All the worry and the jumping and the skipping and the worry.) and you think that running has never felt so good and it’s maybe the best few moments of your life. (Since you killed her, at least.) You’re fucking free. You’re flying.

(You pass out in the hallway,)

(You were fucking walking.)

(Pathetic.)

.

 

The school nurse tells you to “eat this please, darling” and hands you a cookie. (Cookies always make you appreciate the pain.) You stuff it down your throat so fast that she almost looks proud. You miss the dizziness, the separation it put between you and this world, but it will come back.

(It always comes back.) 

Then you notice her looking to your side and you turn your head to see what’s so interesting. Some blond kid is sitting next to you and, oh, you guess he must have brought you here or called the nurse or something. He looks uncomfortable. The nurse’s eyes flick back to you and they look sad. You sigh. Of course. 

You think about how you felt like flying, think about how you didn’t even want to eat, how you weren’t even fucking hungry, how much you fucking hate yourself all the time and it never, never ends. You know you’re going to stop eating again. You just have to be less obvious because people can see things like not eating, and they worry because they don’t know you and everyone you’re killing. They don’t know that you killed your mom or that you look like her or that you have a birthmark on your chest where she had a matching scar. They don’t know how wrong you are.  
(They don’t know how much you suffer for it every day, but if they did they would try to stop it and they’d never know that you deserved it because they will never understand. )

\--

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know this is pretty short but im working on it... it's been crazy lately.


End file.
